Jessica Ennis-Hill has pulled out of her second comeback event in a week to darken the injury gloom hovering over British athletics.

The Olympic heptathlon champion said that her injured Achilles was responding well to treatment but the Diamond League meeting in Oslo on Thursday will come too soon.

Despite her best efforts to play down the problem, any injury inevitably causes alarm bells to ring. Two years ago, she pulled out of the European indoor trials with an unrelated Achilles problem. That also prompted a press release saying that the decision to withdraw was merely “precautionary”, but she eventually missed seven weeks of training and had to fend off a doctor’s plan for surgery. Later, she conceded that the missed months might have contributed